Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" (30 page)

The strange thing is that when I look in my notes now, if I
cover the names, I can barely tell who said what or if the speaker
was black or white. Carswell, Bob (and me, I guess) favored one
man, one vote. Gilly, Nick, Tom and Sally felt Tom's idea about
property qualification had merit. There was a general denunciation
of the Group Areas Act, which dictates where what race can live,
and of U. S. sanctions, too. "Politics is dirty," said Carswell and there was unanimous disparagement of President Botha and Winnie
Mandela. Everyone agreed moderates would come to the fore if
they just had a chance. Bob described, with considerable anger,
how the riots and strikes in Soweto were controlled by anonymous
pamphlets and unsigned ads in the Daily Sowetoen. He blamed
outside agitators, just like the Reagan White House does. "They
call you up in the night," said Carswell, "and ask what size tire
would fit you."

"We need more black police and black army forces," said
Nick. Nick, Bob and Carswell had small children and were furious
about the black school boycott. They said the ANC leaders were
pushing a public-school strike while the leaders own children were
being educated in private schools. They feared, they said, "the
intentional creation of a black underclass." Of course, there's one
of those already but, anyway, everyone praised capitalism for a
while and Bob made a poetic appeal for whites to stay in South
Africa, although perhaps he was just being polite in response to the
hospitality.

Then Nick said something that shocked me, and that I could
see suprised Tom and Sally. "I'm angry that South Africa is singled
out," he said. "Why should Senator Kennedy come here and tell us
our troubles? We're not the only country in the world where bad
things happen."

"I have just this one fear," said Carswell. "Attack from the
outside-South Africa has no friends."

After the meal Gilly waxed historical and told a horrifying
story about seeing three men crucified by the Spoilers gang in
Alexandra in the 1940s. "One man was still alive, nailed up to this
post. He was screaming but his mouth was dry and no sound came
out. I will never forget it."

"What are you guys going to do?" I asked Nick, Bob and
Carswell. "How are you going to get rid of apartheid?"

"Such meetings as this are valuable," said Carswell, as
though something had been accomplished that afternoon.

"That was a real eye-opener," said Tom when Gilly and his
friends had left.

"Incredibly interesting," said Sally. "We've got to do that
again."

And it dawned on me-they'd never had black people as
guests in their house before.

"We've seen Gilly and his wife at office parties," said Sally.
"And there are black and Indian students at the kids' schools.
We've seen the parents at school functions."

We were going to the Fletchers house that night for dinner.
"Let's not say anything about this," said Tom. "I'm not sure how
Bill and Margaret would feel about it. They're a little old-fashioned
about some things."

"Yes," said Sally.

But at one that morning when we were all good and drunk and
passing around the Afrikaner Witzend brandy, Tom couldn't resist.
"You'll never guess what we did this afternoon," he said to Bill and
Margaret. "You know my client Gilly, who owns all the stores?
Well, we had him and some of his young friends out to a braai.
They had some extraordinary things to say. It was a real eyeopener."

"Incredible," said Bill. "What a great idea. We ought to do
that, Margaret. With some of my subcontractors. That's a great
idea."

"We really should," said Margaret.

I had the most peculiar feeling in my woozy haze. I was
present at the birth of a fundamental, epochal realization of human
fellowship. But I was sure the birth was coming too late to save the
baby.

I'd walked Gilly out to the Datsun when he was leaving Tom's
house. And he took me by the arm and said, "Apartheid is the evil
thing. Apartheid must just stop. If those laws are removed, no more
policemen will be needed." He glanced toward Tom and Sally.
"They all know it's wrong."

I said, "They don't seem to know how to get rid of it."

"They know," said Gilly. "They just don't want to give up the
advantage they have on the black man."

"Is it too late?" I said.

"What man does man can fix."

Maybe. On my last day in South Africa I drove through
Soweto-probably not a good idea for a person as putty-colored as
myself in a shiny red rent-a-car. Also, it was illegal. No white person is allowed to go there without government permission. Even
white police and soldiers don't enter Soweto unless the "situation"
gets so out of hand they think they have no choice. But I'd been in
South Africa for a month and had not met one white person who'd
been there. It's just outside Jo-burg, a huge adjunct taking up the
whole southwestern quadrant of the city's outskirts. But I hadn't
talked to any white person who'd ever even seen Soweto.

And then I couldn't find the place. A city of two million
people and when I looked at my rental car map it wasn't there. I
drove around the N-1 beltway and there were no signs, no exits
marked Soweto. I got off in the southwest and headed in what I
thought must be the right direction. I took a couple of gravel roads,
navigating by the sun. Finally I saw a Soweto sign, the size that
might say "PICNIC AREA 1 MILE." And on the other side of a hill was
Soweto, as big as the San Fernando Valley, a vast expanse of little
homes.

It was not such a terrible-looking place, by Third World
standards. It was littered and scruffy and crowded, but most of the
houses looked like what you'd see on an American Indian reservation. Each modest dwelling was set on a small plot of land. There
was electricity and no raw sewage stink.

Soweto was almost rich as riches are measured in Africa. And
there was plenty of economic power here for political power to grow
out of it if that were the way things worked in South Africa. But it
wouldn't have mattered if each of those houses had been Graceland. People would be just as oppressed. South Africa is one of the
few places I've ever been where things are not a matter of dollars
and cents.

I locked my car doors, adjusted my necktie and drove through
the place in a sweat. Soweto is like discovering arithmetic. It is an
epiphany about what "83 percent of the population" means. Until
then I hadn't seen the blacks in South Africa, not really, not even in
the overpopulated homelands. Now they pressed in on every side in
the slow jam of bicycles, trucks and foot traffic. I hoped I had
something in my wallet, some leftover receipt from a United Negro
College Fund donation or some damn thing to save my pink ass
when the comrades got to me. Everyone was staring in my windows. Everyone in the crowd was looking at my pale, stupid face.

And then I saw that they were smiling. And here and there
was a happy wave. There was laughter from the little kids. I drove
through Soweto for nearly an hour without so much as a bad look
tossed in my direction, let alone rocks or firebombs.

Maybe I'd caught them by surprise and they didn't know what
to make of me. Maybe they thought I was so crazy to be there that it
was funny. I didn't know.

Months after I got back I was giving a lecture on journalism at
some little college in the middle of Pennsylvania and I told the
students about driving through Soweto. One of them came up to the
lectern afterward. She was from Soweto, an exchange student.
"Don't you know why the people were smiling and waving at you?"
she said. "They thought you were great."

"But why?"

"It's illegal for you to be there. How did you ever get in?"

"I don't know. I -was lost. I came in through some back roads."

"The government isn't letting anyone in there and when people saw you, that you had managed to get in some way. . . . They
figured you must be somebody good, an organizer, or from some
international group, that you would even be there."

"Even though I was white?"

"Because you were white."

There is some hope for South Africa, for the souls of the
people there anyway. I mean, personally, if I'd lived my forty years
in Soweto and I saw some unprotected honky cruising down my
street on a Saturday afternoon, I would have opened that car like an
oyster and deep-fat fried me on the spot.

MAY 1983

At Epcot Center the Disney corporation has focused its attention on
two things greatly in need of Disneyfication: the tedious future and
the annoying whole wide world.

Once the future promised weekend tours of Jupiter, 200-mph
Pontiacs shaped like tropical fish and happy robots making every
kid's bed. The world beyond our shores was a wonderland of
oddball plants and animals, peopled by folks in interesting colors
who lived in Taj Mahals and trees. Today the future is a quagmire of
micro-chips. They'll connect your television to somebody's typewriter, and, if you can't score a million at Donkey Kong, you'll be
out of work. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has become a jumble
of high-rises, from which pour mobs of college students headed for
our embassies with kindling and Bics.

Mickey, Donald, Goofy to the rescue! Give us hope! Give us
joy! Give us funny mouse ears, anyway, to wear while we man the
ramparts of civilization.

Alas, it's not to be. Walt is dead. And, after a couple of hours
at Epcot, you'll wish you were, too.

Epcot Center is one element in the vast central Florida complex where Disney is attempting to remedy America's chronic
leisure surplus. The whole is twice as large as Manhattan Island.
Epcot itself is almost the size of Central Park.

Five big American corporations sponsor pavilions in the "Future World" half of Epcot Center. I was expecting wonders. I'm a
fan of big American corporations. At least, I used to be. I thought
they embodied that true basis of the American character: utopian
greed. Their vision of the future always combined mercantile
rapacity with such courageous lack of common sense-"Hey, Dad,
can I have the keys to the auto-gyro?" I guess I'm out of date.

Instead of miracles, each pavilion has a mechanical ride that
whisks you through darkened scenes full of robots which have even
less personality than human actors. Every ride seems to begin with
cavemen and end in a video game where a recorded voice asks you
to face the challenges of tomorrow. I thought that's what we're
paying these corporations to do. In between the automat Neanderthals and the tepid splatter of strobe effects is the briefest, most
bowdlerized, most fact-free possible exposition of something that
has something to do with something the corporation vends. It's noneducation in the guise of un-entertainment, and there's not even a
good sales pitch to excuse it.

The Bell System's "Spaceship Earth" is, I suppose, the best of
the lot. You're trundled around inside the immense whiffle ball
that's Epcot's trademark and exposed to tableux morts showing
glimpses of communications technology from mud to the modern
day. The last scene is a nightmarish vault filled with blasting,
flashing television screens. I thought this brought the point home
nicely that it doesn't matter how elaborate a communications system is when there's nothing to communicate.

General Motors has something called "The World of Motion"
that should properly be titled "Ride the Wild Ironies." In the first
place, they propel you through their robot show in a form of mass
rail transit. And the tram cars are all too much like current GM
automobiles-small, slow and made out of plastic. Also, the ride
keeps coming to a halt, caught in some mid-exhibit traffic jam.
Furthermore, General Motors tries to make its history of transporta tion comic at a moment when the U.S. auto industry is just not a
laughing matter.

It's interesting to see what the members of a corporate board
can agree upon as funny. At GM, funny is round, puffy faces and
great big behinds-though other out-sized body parts will do.
We're shown a cave family with very swollen feet. (They had to
walk, you see.) And there's a group of caravan travelers being
overcharged by a fellow with a huge hooked nose. I hope no one
thinks this is anti-Semitic, not after all the trouble GM went to
making 15 percent of their robots black whether black people
belong in the scenes or not. (No, there aren't any out-sized male
parts visible.)

Exxon's "Universe of Energy" tends to the peculiar rather than
the humorous. There are no markings on the entrance doors. You
mill around outside the Exxon monolith until they agree to let you
in. Then you're made to stand in a large, dim hall while an
incomprehensible film montage about wind and sun and rain and
strip mines is shown on a wall. Another such montage is endured
inside a theater. When it ends, the blocks of theater seats start
moving around in a most disconcerting way. After two or three
minutes of mechanical confusion, the seats locomote through a
short tunnel filled with clock-work dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are
depicted without accuracy and much too close to your face.